"Over"

Young Money Entertainment

Artists:

When your debut album is called Thank Me Later, the first single better be some sort of spectacular. And Drake's "Over" does not back down. The track introduces itself with a royal fanfare-- strings, horns, the works. It's an emperor's welcome, and his duds are intact. "I can teach you how to speak my language/ Rosetta Stone," he offers, and some may need a decoder ring to suss out this formerly wheelchair-bound "Degrassi" star's rapid hip-hop ascension. Drake is a new type of major label rap star, one who grew up in the (Toronto) suburbs and is primarily informed by the mirror-borne self-consciousness of Kanye West rather than any sort of street corner-bred notion of masculine invincibility.

Though Drake is signed to Lil Wayne's Young Money imprint, he's more of a foil than a direct descendant of his currently incarcerated boss. While Wayne's talent is famously spontaneous and volatile, Drake is deliberate; Wayne thinks his rhymes in bursts, Drake writes his rhymes down. And this considered style translates to an utterly readable flow-- punchlines like "I really can't complain, everything's kosher/ Two thumbs up, Ebert and Roeper" may not be terribly complex, but Drake's laser-guided delivery turns them into automatic catch-phrases. Another thing that puts "Over" over is its fully-formed internal conflict. Impressively, Drake uses his limited-but-effective singing voice on the hook to express jumbled emotions on instant fame, from anxious confusion ("Who the fuck are y'all?") to self-fulfilled contentment ("I'm doin' me"). "They treat me like a legend, am I really this cold?" he asks near the end of "Over". It's an exalting mission statement that can't help but question its own triumph.